How do you want your children to be when they grow up? When we ask ourselves this question, we often articulate that we want our children to be cooperative, responsible, self-confident, happy, healthy, successful people. A well known psychiatrist, Dr. Gnott, sums this poignant question up to a “T”. We want our offspring to be strong and humane. Obviously, as parents, we have a significant part in contributing to this end product. Consequently, another question we need to ask ourselves is: How do we understand our own childhood experiences and reactions so that we can choose to pass on positive and constructive patterns and beliefs?

In order to assist our children in becoming unique individuals, we need to focus on parenting from the “inside-out.” As parents, we model behaviours and we give verbal and non-verbal messages that are sometimes not conducive to creating healthy, happy children, teens and adults. Frequently, we are not conscious of these behaviours and messages – they are habitual, learned behaviours and beliefs passed down from one generation to the next. The more aware we are of these inter-generational beliefs, the easier it is to choose different behaviours to model for our children.

Dr. Siegel, author of Parenting from the Inside Out, portrays a good example of how our old beliefs and behaviours impact on our parenting. He tells the story of a mother who became agitated and anxious when she was shopping for shoes with her children. Her children loved getting new shoes and initially were quite excited about looking at the selection. Unfortunately, the mother’s agitation over the colour, the price and the sizes spoiled the experience and the children gave in, saying “Whatever you want, Mom.”

This happened many times, with Mom apologizing but not understanding why she dreaded shopping for shoes. Finally, after another exhausting fiasco, her six-year-old son asked, “Didn’t you like to get new shoes as a kid?” Mom suddenly was able to remember her unhappy experiences as a child going to shoe stores. Her mother was frustrated and irritable attempting to fit five or six children with shoes. Her mother didn’t have the time, energy or any understanding of her distress over this situation.

In this example, it wasn’t the present day shopping experience that was affecting this Mom, it was all of the past experiences she had as a child that were influencing her behaviour. Once she was aware of the impact these past experiences were having on her, she could choose to make shopping for shoes with her children more enjoyable. She was also able to share her own experiences as a child which helped her children appreciate her reactions as unrelated to them.

When we act out of old beliefs, our children do not understand and often interpret our behaviour as acceptable because we are “the parent”, and their behaviour as wrong because they are “the children”. They are left with ambivalent feelings about themselves and their parents, and the inter-generational beliefs and behaviours may be re-created once again.

From my 30 years experience in counselling, there seem to be four core beliefs that we store in our unconsciousness: a) “I’m not important,” b) “there is something wrong with me”, c) “I’m not good enough and d) “I’m alone”.

When something happens in our life that triggers one of these old beliefs, we react with intense emotion. Often the intensity of the emotion outweighs the reality of the situation but we are confused by the degree of our outrage or fearfulness. For example, a child or adult who has the unconscious belief that “I am not important” may be triggered by incidents that they perceive to be unfair. If Tom gets new shoes because he desperately needs them and his brother doesn’t, Peter may be emotionally triggered and lament “that’s not fair.” Peter may be interpreting this situation as “I’m not important enough – Tom is more important.”

It may appear to be an incident of fairness, however the underlying trigger could be one of self-importance. Consequently, in dealing with this situation we could ask Peter if he is feeling left out, not as important as his brother. Acknowledging his feelings and empathizing with Peter will help him to eventually move to understanding the reality of the differences between what he and his brother may need in any life situation. Also, reassuring Peter that he is loved and important to you, will relieve his insecurities and dispel the underlying belief.

We all develop our core beliefs about ourselves and others through life experiences. By the age of eight, we have created these belief systems and, unfortunately, some of these beliefs are inaccurate. Individuals tend to keep the same beliefs throughout life, even the mistaken beliefs. Part of our responsibility as parents is to become aware of our mistaken beliefs and find alternatives in order to create new reactions to old patterns. In doing this, we assist our children in becoming unique, strong, and humane individuals – and feel successful and encouraged in our work as parents.